lynda.com (for iPhone)

Amazing library of more than 1,000 learning courses for people at all experience levels. Deep training for advanced software. Instructors are well vetted.

Cons

iPhone screen is too small for most training videos to be useful. Can be tough to find entry-level training for very complex software, i.e., better for keeping skills sharp than learning high-end software from scratch.

Bottom Line

lynda.com's online tutorials help busy professionals keep their software skills razor sharp. But the iPhone's screen is too small for the detailed video tutorials.

Your boss is breathing down your neck, time is of the essence, and you need to learn very quickly how to pull off a specific software trick. Whether you need to animate using keyframes while working in CSS or do something much simpler, like learn how to run a PowerPoint show, lynda.com (from $25 per month, 4 stars), with its catalogue of more than 1,000 video tutorials, has you covered. Unfortunately, if you've got the free lynda.com iPhone app and need to watch the training videos on the go, you won't be able to get much out of them. The content is rich, the video and audio quality are excellent, but the videos are impossible to see on a smartphone screen.

Lynda.com—The Basics To back up a step, lynda.com is a learning and training site built on video tutorials that primarily teach software skills, especially deep and complicated professional-level software, although it also has content for hobbyists (digital photography, for example) and computer novices, and it covers wide array of subjects. All the training videos are hosted online at the namesake website, lynda.com, where paying members login to access video content anytime and as often as they like. Membership starts at $25 per month, although you have to pony up up to $37.50 per month to access some additional exercise files for practicing your newfound skills. The iPhone app is free, but you need to be a paying lynda.com member in order to view any of the videos.

Professionals who need a quick class or two in a specific piece of software to hone their job skills will find lynda.com much more useful than scrubbing through amateur YouTube videos, and much more efficient than attending a live Web-based class that meets at a specific date and time. And what employer would mind signing a $25 expense report for all the training you can cram into 30 days? Answer: none.

Learning on the iPhone Seeing as lynda.com is a service that teaches through video tutorials, it's only fitting that the company has its own tutorial for using the iPhone app. Most users should skip this video, as using the app is self-explanatory.

The iPhone app for lynda.com works anywhere you have a WiFi, 3G, or 4G connection and gives you access to the entire learning library. The app's design is clear and reflects a pared down, easier to navigate version of the full website.

The navigation bar lives along the bottom of the app and lists Home, Library, Subject, and About buttons. The Home page shows active lynda.com members exactly where you last left off with your most recent training, despite whether it took place on a Web browser or on the app (see the slideshow). Scroll down the home screen page, and you'll find a link to your recently viewed videos, which provides additional detail of the videos you've most recently finished watching, including the exact name of the video tutorial, its length, and the date when you last played it. A link to a Latest Releases page lets you see all the newest training videos that have been uploaded to lynda's bank of videos.

The Library tab lets you see all the learning content the service has by subject, software, vendor, or author—meaning the course instructor. The Subject page duplicates some of the functionality of the Library tab, but lets you get to the subject lists quicker. Under the About tab is where you can find settings, as well as a help link, contact information for technical support, and archives of lynda.com's newsletter dating back to 2005.

Visibility lynda.com absolutely delivers extremely detailed content in all its video tutorials, but on the iPhone's tiny screen, it can be extremely difficult to see what's happening. A lot of the training relates to very deep programs with dozens of menus and very small type. Squint all you want, you're not going to be able to follow along with the training tutorials.

For the handful of videos that aren't super tiny—a few of the lessons on digital photography are live, outdoor videos, not screencasts, that contain tips about using natural light rather how to navigate software—lynda's app works well. A brilliant little feature, the Movie Quality Settings, lets you intentionally scale down the resolutions of the video to accommodate a slow connection.

Of course, a lot of the video content is already too small to see clearly on the iPhone, so degrading the picture further won't help, but it's still a nice feature to include.

PCMag may earn affiliate commissions from the shopping links included on this page. These commissions do not affect how we test, rate or review products. To find out more, read our complete terms of use.

Jill Duffy is a contributing editor, specializing in productivity apps and software, as well as technologies for health and fitness. She writes the weekly Get Organized column, with tips on how to lead a better digital life. Her first book, Get Organized: How to Clean Up Your Messy Digital Life is available for Kindle, iPad, and other digital formats. She is also the creator and author of ProductivityReport.org.
Before joining PCMag.com, she was senior editor at the Association for Computing Machinery, a non-profit membership organization for...
More »